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Monday, 24 June 2013

Well.. April's box was undervalue and well what a surprise. So is this box. I felt totally conned out of my money so I claimed my money back. According to the company unless I pay up what I was refunded I will not get any more items or boxes from them and apparently its "totally as described".. I'm sorry but when selling a box for $32 which is £21.26 when paid in paypal, and only receiving items worth under £10 .. I don't see how that is "as described".. Why should I pay for their boxes for them to scam me out of my money and send me samples worth under half of what I paid for, for the box...

Frankly I'm extremely annoyed. More so now that they mailed me saying I either pay up or I am not allowed any more boxes or to buy anything from them.

Any DECENT company would try to understand the problems and try to sort them , I complained it was undervalue and I was not happy.. Did they reply? NO. Did they offer a part refund? NO.. Did they even care that they were conning people out of money? Clearly not.

A company like that, I do NOT want to buy from again. My April & TWO May Boxes I got just about valued one lot of $32.

I originally paid £19.50 for two April boxes and then they put the price up due to postage prices going up.. fair enough, so it was £21.26 for Mays. In total £60.26.. They instead sent me two may boxes and didn't even apologize when I posted on their page. Not only that April box was two months late and only valued a lovely £7.04 when I paid £19.50 and according to them that's okay? I could have reported them for that as its fraud since they're clearly ripping people off but I didn't and just claimed my money back.

Their previous boxes were good.. But now I don't think they even care. The lack of communication with customers is awful. I mailed them asking if the boxes were sent and I got totally ignored .. People even get ignored on their facebook page. Its awful.

I previously also purchased a june box and I asked for my money back , I do not want any more of their boxes after the April & May boxes and with how they treat customers.

Please note, some prices are calculated from full size items and since I don't have the contents amount for each item I have no choice but to use weight, but the items may value slightly less since the pots take up some weight.

But anyway..

Here are the contents of my box.. :

Item 1: The Bath Cafe Tart Melt Samples

Okay... not entirely sure how wax tart melts are "beauty related" but anyway they smell nice.. But you can buy these for $1 which is approx 66pas I contacted the company since I wasn't sure of the value.

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Item 2: Sycamore Boutique Under Eye Cream Sample

I originally thought this valued £3.16..but then i realised the container probably had a bit of weight to it and if the total weight is 9g there is no way the contents is 9g and according to the natural beauty box, my sample would be 5g contents approx so does that mean my pot is 4g itself?!! if thats the case it only actually values £1.75 !!

www.etsy.com/shop/sycamoreboutique

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Item 3: Sycamore Boutique Lip Tint Sample

You can buy 3 of these samples for £1.93 making one worth approx 64p!

www.etsy.com/shop/sycamoreboutique

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Items 4 & 5: Holistic Owl Owlchy Ointment Sample & Body Butter Sample

These two samples you can buy for 65p each! so £1.30 for both of them.

www.etsy.com/shop/holisticowl

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Item 6: Molly Rose Balms Lip Balm

Well again... you can buy this for 65p. Apparently the lip balm was supposed to be 9g? hmmm...

www.etsy.com/shop/mollyrosebalms

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Item 7. Plus Facile Natural Bath Salt Sample

You can buy these bath salts full size at 4oz = 113g for £1.31. This sample is 16g as you can see, so.. £1.31 divided by 113 then times by 16 makes this only worth around 19p!

www.etsy.com/shop/plusfacile

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Item 8: Cheeky Chickie Soap Natural Soap Sample

This was infact the cheapest sample I've ever receive in a beauty box.. And it didn't even weigh 1g. Its actually that thin that if I try to use it it will just snap. Or slide out of my hands... Full size 90g is worth £3.45 which would make it approximately 4p per gram.. But since it doesn't even weigh 1g its even less than that! I mean really. .. Sending a sample that only values £0.04. It may be a lovely soap but a sample that tiny how am I even supposed to test it? My soap sample was supposed to weigh 8g.. I think they were a bit off with that.

www.etsy.com/shop/cheekychickiesoap

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Item 9: Passion Moon Potions Perfume Sample Vial

Also according to natural beauty box this was supposed to be 5g? Anyway.. you can buy it for 56p.

www.etsy.com/shop/passionmoonpotions

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Item 10: Earth Angel Minerals Butter Cream Skin Balancer Sample

You can buy this on their shop £3 for a 3g tub with approx .5g net wt but this is only 2g and .28g .. Means per .01g it costs 6p since 3 divided by 50 (which is the .5g) equals 6p.. So if its 6p for 0.01g then 6 times by 28 gives me a value of £1.68 for this.

So... the overall total for the box is :

£7.47

In the end , the box actually worked out cheaper than I thought. I originally thought it was around £8.50 value but £7.47 is worse!!!! I'm disgusted .. Disgusted that the company think they can get away with keeping £21.28 and only sending £7.47 worth. Apparently according to them, everything was as "described" because they added in 10-15 samples etc.. that may be so but HELLOOOOOO .. Wheres the rest of my moneys worth? Since I got two mays boxes, one I paid £19.50 for and the other £21.28 .. the two boxes combined totalled £14.94.. Yes.. Both boxes didn't even value the price of one box.

So one april box plus two may boxes and the contents only totalled £21.98 and I paid £60.26 in total.. Yet they complain that I put in a paypal claim to claim my money back from them and told me they sent me an invoice and if I don't pay it they refuse to send me anything ever again. To be fair I don't care. I'm not paying it. I shouldn't have to pay it. They only sent me £21.98 worth in 3 boxes which barely passes the cost of one box... So I'm not letting them con me out of money. Sorry but not a very smart move.

I'm sorry.. what happened there? You're now telling me in another email that boxes that contain foil samples will contain no more than two.. .yet you previously told me there shouldn't be any in upcoming boxes? 10-15 deluxe samples? Err.. what were these .. They may as well change it to "cheap deluxe samples that don't even value half the box price".. Their previous boxes were good despite the lack of communication etc.. but they were over the value of the box price. I wouldn't even mind if the contents added up to the box price but these boxes now are awful. They say its because they buy the products and it costs them shipping prices as well and the boxes cost them money.. but that doesn't mean its okay to send undervalued boxes. Then they tried to state it costs a lot to send to the UK. Everyone gets these boxes so its not just people in the UK that would have been out of pocket a lot of money.. I'm pretty sure it doesn't cost loads to send to other canadian addresses and they'd be getting the exact same valued box so that can't really be used as an excuse.

As you can probably tell. I'm extremely annoyed with these boxes and the fact the company still expects me to pay the £60.26 for all 3 boxes.. Update: I've got my refund for my June box that I asked for and will no longer be receiving anything from this company.

Edited again 6/7/2013.. Since people don't understand my calculation methodsHere you go:

And like I previously mentioned, since some of the samples don't have the measurements on the samples of how much content is in them, I had to go by weight to do the calculations as it was the closest thing I could use. I never said the calculations were completely accurate since I did previously state that I had to use the weight in g / ml instead of the actual contents amount & some of the containers may weigh 1g or two..

As you can see, I am not the only one who uses the same method. A previous leaflet from a box received from this company also calculated using the contents and stated one of the items that was 1oz full size was $22 and the sample was 0.5oz and valued $11 which is half the full size price since it is half the contents amount.

Since the leaflet was nothing like the above one for this months box & just a plain sheet with the name of the products and were to get them, I had to look up every product and work it out for myself.

Saturday, 15 June 2013

Well well well.. For a company that were supposed to be getting back on track after taking a month off at the beginning of the year aren't doing very well at all. They do not keep customers informed, they say they'll be posting around a specific time and don't and they also ignore comments and emails.. Not very good if you ask me. I did love their boxes. Now I dislike them and the customer service. Trying to act as if everythings okay delaying peoples boxes by 2 months so its too late to open a claim for the money back. Well sorry.. Despite receiving the box eventually I will be claiming my money back for my april and both may boxes I received.. Even though I was supposed to receive two april boxes and one may so there you go another mess up. But anyway... Here is the April Box that cost me £19.50.

All the contents..

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Item number 1: Arachnes Demie Oatmeal Chai Natural Soap Sample

Value of this sample: £0.51 ... You can buy 3oz / 85g for £3.60 at www.etsy.com/shop/ArachnesDemise if you search for the soap. The sample was supposed to be 14g I think but as you can see mine was only 12g. If you divide 3.60 by 85 times 12 you get approx 51p rounded up to the nearest figure.

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Item number 2: Opale-Essence All Natural Mineral Eyeshadow Sample

Value of this sample: Well as you can see below, its not even 1g... You can buy samples on their page http://www.etsy.com/shop/opaleessence for £0.97 although you can buy 5g on there which is full size for £2.90 and £2.90 divided by 5 is £0.58 so really its not even worth 58p!

Value of the sample: Approx £1.94. I took off 1g when calculating as the container would add some weight. You can buy 2oz (approx 56.7g) on http://www.etsy.com/shop/greenvisions for £6.54 and 8oz (approx 227g) for £16.35. Calculating from the larger pot of 227g.. I did 16.35 divided by 227 and then timed the result by 26 which was the weight once i took off 1g for the container.. the result was approx 1.94

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Item number 4: Herbolution Calendula Chamomile Cleansing Grains

Value of the sample: You can buy 10 for £8.37 making them value approx 83.7p/84p each(rounded to the nearest) or singular for £1.05 but fill size is £6.54 and 28g and as you can see below my sample is only 3g. So I divided 6.54 by 28 and then timed the total by 3 to find the value was actually only 70p rounded to the nearest. http://www.etsy.com/shop/herbolution

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Item number 5: Abbalope Natural Soap Bar Sample

Value of the item: Approx £0.41. Full size on their shop is £3.27 and that is for 4oz/113g so 14g (shown below) is actually only worth 41p! To work that out I did 3.27 divided by 113 then timed the total by 14 and rounded it to the nearest penny. http://www.etsy.com/shop/abbalope

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Item number 6: Into Blu Natural Scented Body Lotion Sample

Value of the sample: You can buy this at http://www.etsy.com/shop/IntoBlue for 65p.

My cat decided she wanted a sniff...

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Item number 7: Pldbody peppermint fizzie sample

Value of this sample: The sample as you can see is 19g . Full size is 85g for £2.28 making this worth approx £0.51. Although if I bought a set of 2 for £3.92 then my sample would only value £0.44. But I'll go with the value taken from the set of 2 price. http://www.etsy.com/shop/pldbody

I accidentally dropped it in my cereal so had to remove the outer packaging!

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Item number 8: FyreWurkShop Natural Full Size Votive Candle

Value of the item: Although I couldn't find that scent on their page, their candles are £1.14 each or 3 for £2.45 making one value £0.82.

http://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/FyreWurkShop

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Item number 9: Naturalana Dry Shampoo / Dusting Powder Sample

Value of the sample: You can get 1.5oz (42g) for £2.60 or 3oz (approx 85g) for £4.91. As you can see my sample is only 13g and if the value was calculated from the £2.60 price then the value would be £0.80 but if calculated through the £4.91 price then the value of the sample would only be £0.75 but I'll stick with the 75p value.

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Item number 10: Naturalana Foot Ease Foot Scrub Sample

Value of the sample: Their page says you get 3 foot scrubs weighing between 3.75 - 4oz for £2.29 so if we estimate approx 2.87oz which is 81g. As their is 3 soaps, 81 divided by 3 = 27g approx per soap if equal. My sample was 8g. So I divided 2.29 by 3 to get 76p per soap if buying full size, so I did 0.76 divided by 27 and then i timed the total by 8 which gave me a value of £0.24 for the scrub.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Naturalana/

Overall thoughts:

I've claimed my money back for one box so far. I tried to claim it back for both april boxes I was to get but my bank only succeeded with one so far so it looks like I'll have to pay them a visit and get the other claimed back unless they're willing to refund it which I highly doubt.

As you can see..the total of my box only comes to:

£7.04.. Oh yes.. don't forget I paid £19.50.

So yes, I will be trying to claim my money back. I managed to claim it back for one box even though I asked my bank to pull back two payments twice as I have a case open for the May box in paypal (which by the way the value is not much better and I paid more for that as the price went up). So at the moment only been successful at getting one payment back. Since the natural beauty box ignored my email when I asked them if the April Box was posted in may, and seem to ignore a lot of negative posts and only respond to positive, then its most likely a waste of time even trying to ask them for a refund so its got to be done the hard way. I'm not entirely sure what they were thinking sending contents of such low value when people are spending $30 -$32. Its a con. I've had previous boxes from them that valued over $100 and ones that valued $40 + so why on earth are they sending out ones that value less than the box price!

I'm totally disgusted! Anyone else get this and share the same opinions?